In many different applications, handling of high-speed clock signals is necessary, such as but not limited to, data communication, wherein receivers may recover a clock signal from incoming data. For example, the clock signal may subsequently be used to sample the incoming data in order to generate a new data signal, which has been re-timed or synchronized with the recovered clock signal.
If the clock is a high-speed (i.e., high frequency, the terms being used interchangeably throughout) clock, dividing its frequency by a specific number in order to count bits of the data may comprise complicated and large circuitry.